If you live in the mid west or northern areas where lakes typically freeze in the winter, you may have not thought about the ramifications of leaving your floating dock in the water all winter. If you are planning on keeping your dock in the water watch this video and learn why using Polyethylene drums as your dock floats is an easy, inexpensive way to save years of wear and tear on your dock or swim platform. If you were not planning on keeping your dock in the water during the winter this application may change your mind. It is a much safer alternative to traditional dock floats. The dock you see in the image above came from one of our customers who used our wooden floating dock plans to build this dock.

Floating dock cost comparisons are usually based on per square foot costs. The cost of a traditional floating dock using standard dock floats can vary anywhere from $24 to $30 dollars a square foot, but can also go much higher than that.

A Rolling Barge Floating Dock using 55 gallon plastic drums as the dock floats will run between 30 to 40 percent less.

If you buy one of our floating dock kits the cost will be around around $15 per square foot. However even if we provide you a fully assembled dock the cost before shipping will cost about $20 per square foot.

There’s no question that the ‘Out of the Box’ cost is a great value, however when you factor in the versatility and longevity of using Rolling Barrel Technology for our floating dock construction, it make the comparison even more impressive.

Plastic Barrels for floating docks. One of the most frequently asked questions we get at Rolling Barge is what is the best size plastic barrel to use for a floating dock?

Watch the video below as Phil explains the basic sizes that are readily available to use for your application. You can use either size Polyethylene Barrels for your floating dock kit or swim platform, however most of the time the 55 gallon variety works best.

Researching the floating dock parts that are used to construct your dock should be a major part of the due diligence in your buying process. Whether your dock is going to be in saltwater or freshwater, it’s important to know the different types of materials you have available for the parts you use in your structure.

It’s amazing how powerful and just how destructive water can be to a vessel or a structure like a floating dock. The two videos below show a perfect example of just how tough the water of any type can be on aluminum and what you can do about it.

If you are purchasing a floating dock from Rolling Barge you can rest assured that we focus on lifetime designs. However, we are constantly testing and refining our process. No matter where you purchase your dock or barge, make sure that you have the proper materials, so you don’t have problems two or three summers after you purchase.

All Rolling Barge structures are engineered with 6061 t6 Aluminum for all of our floating dock parts. This includes our boat dock frames, and floating dock kit frames as well as gangways. When we started out we researched the different material options: such as steel, wood and of course aluminum. Although we sell floating dock plans that are constructed from wood, everything we actually manufacture whether it be a kit, barge or swim platform is constructed with aluminum.

There are numerous grades of aluminum. 6061 T6 is used in a variety of other commercial applications such as aircraft wings, bicycle frames and even scuba tanks. We concluded that aluminum is the superior material for floating dock construction because of it’s strength and lite weight.

One of the arguments to using aluminum versus steel is the fatigue factor. Watch the video below to see why this should not be a concern.